The Trump administration’s Justice Department is taking legal action against the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department over their handling of concealed-carry permit reviews, asserting that there is a “purposeful pattern of excessive delay that effectively voids this constitutional right.”

The federal government has launched a lawsuit against the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department for their history of “persistent, unreasonable delays that essentially negate this constitutional right.”

This follows our own pending lawsuit of CRPA v. LASD, which covers the same… pic.twitter.com/zUUAW5nbtM

— SAF (@2AFDN) September 30, 2025

The Second Amendment Foundation post continues:

This lawsuit follows our own ongoing case, CRPA v. LASD, which targets the same problem and achieved a preliminary injunction, although it was limited to the specific plaintiffs involved. A thread is available on the complaint!

A Fox News report has more details:

The Justice Department has taken legal steps against the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department (LASD) and Sheriff Robert Luna, claiming they have “systematically” postponed issuing concealed carry permits to law-abiding residents, infringing on the Second Amendment.

This marks the DOJ’s inaugural affirmative legal action in support of gun owners, accusing the LASD of establishing a “consistent pattern” of obstruction, as law-abiding citizens have been forced to endure months or even years of waiting for a decision. 

In their complaint, the DOJ highlighted that, from January 2024 to March 2025, the sheriff’s office received 3,982 new permit applications, yet by May 8, only two had been approved. At that time, two applications had been denied, 1,210 had been “withdrawn for various reasons,” and “about 2,768 applications for new concealed firearm licenses were still pending.”

This seems a clear attempt to interfere with the residents’ rights under the Second Amendment. A right delayed is a right denied, and the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department seems determined to delay any concealed-carry permit applications as long as possible, in some cases as long as two years from application to interview.

Los Angeles County and indeed California as a whole are bucking the current trend in this issue. As of this writing, 29 of the 50 states are “constitutional carry” states, where residents may carry a handgun without any permit or permission slip from the state or local government. Those states include Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, West Virginia, and Wyoming. Note that these are predominantly Republican-controlled states, which should come as no surprise.

Amazingly, those states have not devolved into dystopian hellscapes with bullet-riddled bodies on every street corner. No, that would be Chicago.